The exercise gods do smile upon me
Oct. 17th, 2010 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieIt's been quite the exercise-fest here the last few days.
Thursday was my usual gym session with my PT guy, who has been helping me get my knees into better shape (along with the rest of me). He'd just started me on a new routine the week previous, which is no doubt very good for me but involves lots of lunges and other lower-body work, which left me practically hobbling the next day. This would not have been at all convenient for this Friday, so I asked him at the start if we could go easy on those.
Why? he wanted to know (quite reasonably.)
Because I'm signed up for a charity 5K tomorrow, and I plan to *run at least a portion of it,* I confessed.
Right, he said, turning several different shades of pale. We're going to do all upper body work today.
Which we did, during which time he gave me all kinds of advice for keeping my knees (and other bits) from giving out.
Now this didn't come as a complete surprise to him. I told him earlier in the year that I had ambitions of being able to run a 5k at some point in the nearish future. And we've been working together on my craptastic knees and joints long enough that I'm regularly running two-minute intervals between weight reps, with no ill effects. And I'm doing some running for cardio after weights. But there's a smegging BIG difference between running a while on a treadmill and actually, y'know, attempting to run for real, out there in the real world, with lots of other people running around you, and people looking at you. Gah.
So Friday rolls around, and midafternoon I change out of my work clothes and into my workout clothes, and off I go with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hiker_chick and our fearless grandboss KnittingLeader and a few other co-workers out to the charity race. (Oddly enough, everyone who signed up for the charity race from our group was female. None of the men under KnittingLeader are runners or walkers, I guess.) Hiker_chick already knew I'm not really a runner, and I informed the others, so expectations were set for me run/walking the course, as opposed to actually running the whole thing. And I did more walking than running. But I ran for at least twenty minutes of the course, which is unheard-of for me. I might have run the entire first mile; we didn't see the sign, so it's hard to say. It was probably close.
To be honest, I could have walked the 5K faster than I ran/walked it. I have walked faster 5Ks in the past. But that wasn't the point; the point was to try running, and I did. Hiker_chick kindly stayed with me the entire way, despite the fact that this was PAINFULLY slow for her. She probably could have run the course twice in the amount of time it took me to finish the course once. (To give you an idea of the variation in running speeds and course times, the winner of the 5K completed the course in just over 17 minutes. It took me a little less than three times that.) But I ran part of a 5K. And I did not die, and my knees did not give out. In point of fact, the thing that gave me the most trouble was my lungs (I got very phlegmy, and I wound up coughing and having an achy chest for about a day after) and my heart rate (which kept getting way too high). Any advice out there on how to work on those things?
So anyway, I survived. So naturally I went climbing Saturday withmonkeybard after running my legs to jelly the day before and working my arms over the day before that. It wasn't my best session ever, but it was fun, particularly since humilitas came along with us to give it a try. Unsurprisingly, she kicked butt; after checking out on the 5.4, she rainbowed her way up a couple of 5.7's. (Annoyingly, there's nothing up between 5.4 and 5.7 in the gym right now, with the exception of a 5.6 that is completely nonlogical.) The climbing gym isn't too far from where she works, so I'm hoping she catches the bug and joins us occasionally.
You'd think I'd've had enough after all this activity. But no. I went to my usual spin class this morning, and had a good ride. And the exercise gods apparently decided to reward me for my virtue (or at least for my attempts at being active), because I wound up scoring two pairs of nifty shoes for free, completely at random. Yay!
Now to take advantage of all this lovely weather and do some long-overdue gardening. Speaking of exercise...
Thursday was my usual gym session with my PT guy, who has been helping me get my knees into better shape (along with the rest of me). He'd just started me on a new routine the week previous, which is no doubt very good for me but involves lots of lunges and other lower-body work, which left me practically hobbling the next day. This would not have been at all convenient for this Friday, so I asked him at the start if we could go easy on those.
Why? he wanted to know (quite reasonably.)
Because I'm signed up for a charity 5K tomorrow, and I plan to *run at least a portion of it,* I confessed.
Right, he said, turning several different shades of pale. We're going to do all upper body work today.
Which we did, during which time he gave me all kinds of advice for keeping my knees (and other bits) from giving out.
Now this didn't come as a complete surprise to him. I told him earlier in the year that I had ambitions of being able to run a 5k at some point in the nearish future. And we've been working together on my craptastic knees and joints long enough that I'm regularly running two-minute intervals between weight reps, with no ill effects. And I'm doing some running for cardio after weights. But there's a smegging BIG difference between running a while on a treadmill and actually, y'know, attempting to run for real, out there in the real world, with lots of other people running around you, and people looking at you. Gah.
So Friday rolls around, and midafternoon I change out of my work clothes and into my workout clothes, and off I go with
hiker_chick and our fearless grandboss KnittingLeader and a few other co-workers out to the charity race. (Oddly enough, everyone who signed up for the charity race from our group was female. None of the men under KnittingLeader are runners or walkers, I guess.) Hiker_chick already knew I'm not really a runner, and I informed the others, so expectations were set for me run/walking the course, as opposed to actually running the whole thing. And I did more walking than running. But I ran for at least twenty minutes of the course, which is unheard-of for me. I might have run the entire first mile; we didn't see the sign, so it's hard to say. It was probably close. To be honest, I could have walked the 5K faster than I ran/walked it. I have walked faster 5Ks in the past. But that wasn't the point; the point was to try running, and I did. Hiker_chick kindly stayed with me the entire way, despite the fact that this was PAINFULLY slow for her. She probably could have run the course twice in the amount of time it took me to finish the course once. (To give you an idea of the variation in running speeds and course times, the winner of the 5K completed the course in just over 17 minutes. It took me a little less than three times that.) But I ran part of a 5K. And I did not die, and my knees did not give out. In point of fact, the thing that gave me the most trouble was my lungs (I got very phlegmy, and I wound up coughing and having an achy chest for about a day after) and my heart rate (which kept getting way too high). Any advice out there on how to work on those things?
So anyway, I survived. So naturally I went climbing Saturday with
monkeybard after running my legs to jelly the day before and working my arms over the day before that. It wasn't my best session ever, but it was fun, particularly since humilitas came along with us to give it a try. Unsurprisingly, she kicked butt; after checking out on the 5.4, she rainbowed her way up a couple of 5.7's. (Annoyingly, there's nothing up between 5.4 and 5.7 in the gym right now, with the exception of a 5.6 that is completely nonlogical.) The climbing gym isn't too far from where she works, so I'm hoping she catches the bug and joins us occasionally.You'd think I'd've had enough after all this activity. But no. I went to my usual spin class this morning, and had a good ride. And the exercise gods apparently decided to reward me for my virtue (or at least for my attempts at being active), because I wound up scoring two pairs of nifty shoes for free, completely at random. Yay!
Now to take advantage of all this lovely weather and do some long-overdue gardening. Speaking of exercise...
